


The Wrong Side

by HerdOfTurtles



Series: My sad attempt at whumptober 2020 [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: American Revolution, Angst, Betrayal, Gen, Historical Hetalia, Waking up Restrained, Whumptober 2020, more angst than whump though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:02:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26756227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerdOfTurtles/pseuds/HerdOfTurtles
Summary: England wakes in the enemy camp, fresh from regenerating after taking a bullet to the brain during a particularly violent battle.Written for Whumptober 2020, prompt: Waking up restrained
Relationships: America & England (Hetalia)
Series: My sad attempt at whumptober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949041
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	The Wrong Side

**Author's Note:**

> hhhhhHHHHHHHHHh *drowns in work and stress*
> 
> can't believe it's that time of the year already.  
> So I'm not sure how much whumptober I'm actually going to finish in October. I'm going to try to do an entire England centric whumptober (wow what did England ever do to me) but I got a heckton of stuff to do and I've been swamped with writing other essays, emails, and various other things I'd rather just ignore and lay face first on the floor until death's cold grasp pulls me into the abyss of purgatory. Anyhow, my goal is to at least make it to prompt ten before my surgery this month whacks me in the face and renders me useless for two weeks.
> 
> please enjoy this very more-angst-than-whump fic while I go scream into the void before my next meeting.

Something warm rolled in waves through the air, and England recognised the feeling of soft tamed flames of a fire. He still couldn't feel it, though. Not like the humans could. The winter was deep in his bones and snow was pressed into his body, it crunched under him as he shifted, and miles away his men were freezing. The distance was almost painful, and it was doubtful anyone friendly to his uniform would have been near, so it left the question of who exactly had picked his carcass off that blood soaked battlefield. Which was wrong. No one aside from his general knew his Identity. No one in the New World knew his identity, it'd been ages since he'd even touched the land, so the fact that someone had even collected his body off the field was disturbing and England stiffened and became painfully alert and suddenly had a distrust of those flames so near to him.

He breathed deeply, but kept his masquerade of sleep intact.

Last thing he'd known, he'd been shot. Bullet right between the eyes from an untrained musket in the first minutes of a battle. He hadn't even had the chance to fire his own weapon. After that, there was a good chance that his body had been lost in the chaos, and when his men... left... he'd been left as well. 

The circumstances of the battle, and the outcome, England was still yet to be knowledgeable of. 

He sat in the cold a bit longer, listening, until he was certain of his aloneness. Then England attempted to find a better position. He shuffled a bit in the snow, blinking his blurry post-death eyes open while attempting to sit up, but his plan swiftly proved faulty. A quick test of movement found that his body was restrained; tightly restrained.

His stomach churned.

They didn't just take his body- his lethally shot between the eyes body- they had tied him up, which meant they had been fully expecting him to wake up from his death. They recognised him. They had seen his body on the battle field and known he, among all the dead, would wake up from a bullet to the brain.

England shivered, feeling queasy with newfound anxiety. His sight darted about, quickly assessing his surroundings for anything-- clues, a way to escape, how they'd know him. How did they know? Who were they? Did... did he have a mole leading his army? 

Directly within his line of blurry sight the snow was packed down, clearly from under the heels of herds of men, and splotches of soil stained the dirty snow brown. Aside from that, he was in a poorly constructed tent erected of wood, patched old cloths and animal skins, and he himself lay ungracefully in the corner, a good distance from a pit of small flames in the centre.

He had been taken to an amateur camp, built by an army without proper supplies.

Of course it was the rebels; the unloyal and ungrateful rabid members of the colonies who'd been violently upsetting everything. Loyalists had been tarred and feathered, essential goods destroyed, families spit apart all in the name of their so-called justice. They were the ones hurting people and not abiding to the law. 

These were the people his army was supposed to quickly wipe out, while he wiped out any personification that had manifested, if any had. 

He curled tightly inward. Curled up pathetically on the ground, the snow did a good job at numbing his anxiety at least. 

His anxiety wasn't about the Soldiers- the ones that shouldn't even be here for a war that shouldn't be happening- it was for the betrayal. That hurt most. The knowledge that someone back home had ratted him out- and it had to have been someone close to have known his secret of immortality- was more painful than he liked to admit. He told barely anyone. His range of trust was too narrow to accommodate for more-- but apparently even then that was too much.

How did France do it? How did France befriend every human he met? The ones in the street, the ones in the countryside, the high society, the city people, and everyone else in between all seem to have met or known someone who's met France. It didn't make sense, it wasn't safe, and in England's experience, it was a quick path to the grave. 

A sort of spiteful and petty hatred for France began to creep up in him when the snow began to crunch with the sound of footsteps toward the tent.

In seconds his mind snapped back to his current situation and England stilled.

Low mumbles passed outside. 

He knew they knew his secret, so it was likely that they were expecting him to be awake, which meant they were purposefully keeping their voices low so he couldn't glean their words. 

England took a slow exhale and calmed his breathing before laying back into a more natural position in the cold.

Forcing his eyes closed was the hardest part-- he didn't trust humans, especially the traitorous war hungry lot, but tricking them would take that small sacrifice.

Seconds after stilling his body he heard their steps inter the tent where they shuffled around in the snow. He could feel eyes burning into him. He suddenly became aware of how shallow and long each breath of uneven air was as it passed between his lips.

Then the crunching of dirt filthy snow stopped, and--

"I thought you said he would wake by sunrise?"

England suppressed a violent shiver. 

Here. The person who betrayed him. They were here. In the tent.

The urge to leap up off the floor and draw blood from the human who dare turn him over to the enemy surged strong inside his bones and his heavily beating heart jumped with malice. How dare they do this to him. How dare they tie him up and leave him in the snow for these treasonous men to sink their teeth into.

He flinched when a warm palm descended onto his shoulder.

It was gone in less than a second, pulling back as if burned. The human exhaled a small noise of fright that sounded like a mouse caught in a snare.

"I told you he'd be awake." 

That... voice.

England's world, painfully, slowly froze. Dawning realisation spilled ice into his veins and it only spread until every cog in his brain turned the voice over.

The ice stopped his heart. Every vein in his body failed and his lungs ceased to draw in the tainted air of the tent.

England had prepared to meet betrayal with blood but not... not *this.*

Anything but this.

England whipped his head back just to make sure, just to see if it wasn't some grand mistake because it had to be and there was no other explanation. He wanted anything but that-- he would give himself up for that chance, that small chance to fix it, to pretend this wasn't happening even though he had to confirm it and once he did it would all be tarnished.

And in that second he turned to look his gaze met a familiar face and it was the last thing he ever wanted to see, because England had been planning to slip away to find the personification he'd been raising for years now in order to make sure the boy was okay during the riots. 

And here he was.

America, standing with the traitors. America, standing side by side with men sentenced to death.

England couldn't say a word. He swallowed numbly. He saw the mismatched uniform, the marks of the enemy- the marks of a traitor- and his brother was buried under it all.

"Make sure he's watched by at least two guards, day and night. He's going to try to escape." America glared at the vacant space beside him, unable to meet his eyes like a child who knows they should be in trouble.

And any doubt still living in him vanished. The painful truth was the only thing left.

England... had been wrong. It wasn't ice in his blood. It was fire. Ravenous fire... with twisted knots in his chest... fingers flickering and burning him to ash. Things he hadn't felt in decades. Things he hadn't felt since the Norman invasions or since Rome. 

But of course. He was such a fool. His own family- his brothers- all wanted him dead, so why would his colonies be any different?

"Alfred." England was still numb, but he practically spat the name out, slicing any shock from his expression. Cutting ties with people hurt, but if there was one thing time proved he was good at, it was burying friendships and family members.

And it worked. 

America's nearly hesitant glare softened with confusion before closing off to him and England knew he was starting down a path he could never turn back from. It was better to push away now before it hurt worse later.

"Arthur you're not a prisoner-"

"Really?" He hissed.

"No- but yeah, but that's not what I mean-"

"If you let me go right now, I won't gut your men on my way out." 

America looked taken back, maybe even horrified. But why should he look that way? What right did he have to feel anything when he himself was planning to spill blood against their people?

"I'm sorry Arthur, but I can't let you help the British." America shook his head. His resolve reflected in his steel gait, his stiff, polished look despite his ragged uniform. America thought he was on a moral high ground. He was snared in the lofty wave of the revolution, yet it was soon to die.

"We are the British." England lowered his voice dangerously. 

America shuffled awkwardly in the snow, fingering the sleeves of his coat. It was too big for him, reaching over his hand by an inch or two. He was so young... so stupid, but still new to the world and even England was still young and stupid but this was a whole new brand of stupid. At least England had lived long enough to know not to rebel against his country without a major fail-safe in place-- but America? The kid was standing there, idle, having already exhausted his words, looking to his human companion for help. 

The human didn't say a thing. The human was still staring at England like he was a freak of nature or the spawn of satan himself.

"Erm... just watch him for now." America told the human, who's eyes widened in fright. America didn't notice. "I'll be back, though. I'll explain everything, Arthur, I promise."

And with that, America left.

England found that he didn't want to hear what America would say. He didn't want an excuse. He could fix this himself. America was young and naïve and he didn't really want this, he couldn't know what he was doing. Parliament would accept that. England would protect him, and maybe America would be punished, but England won't let parliament kill him or hurt him for being a traitor to the crown. Everything would go back to normal. He was overreacting. This was a mistake, and it was a fixable one. 

If he wanted to fix it, he had to crush this rebellion first.

England stared the human who'd been left the task of watching him, and dug right into those frightened eyes with a seething, furious gaze.


End file.
